The ski industry has traditionally used an industry standard wire-label system for securing a skier's lift pass to his or her outer ski garment. The wire of such a system is typically shaped in the form of a triangle and will often have a split opening along the bottom of the triangle that defines an aperture which, after being threaded through a closed mechanical loop on the skier's outer garment, is covered by a self-adhesive label. When used properly, the label is folded in half over the wire, covering the opening along the bottom of the triangle and adhering to itself (i.e., adhesive to adhesive), thereby embracing the wire.
This wire label system, however, presents a number of operational problems. For example, printing self-adhesive labels on new high-speed printers can be problematic since the label can leave the backing, resulting in significant repair costs and/or down time of the printing process. Ski operators have also had to deal with disposing of the discarded label backings and shipping and distributing the wires to the skiers without the wires becoming inseparably tangled. Indeed, it has been estimated that as few as half of the wires purchased by ski areas will actually be used for the purpose of their purchase, with the balance being thrown away.
More recent developments in the area of hang tag fasteners are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,535,491. That patent describes a plastic fastener having a body with a first retaining means for nonreleasably retaining a first article and a second retaining means for nonreleasably attaching the first article to a second article. FIG. 1 depicts one such embodiment of a recent prior art plastic fastener. As FIG. 1 suggests, the prior art fastener is a very complex, injection-molded structure that must incorporate two mechanically unique and distinct fastening means to attach a ski pass, etc. to the skier's jacket. Indeed, embodiments of the prior art plastic fastener require (1) a comparatively large first fastening structure having a rather complex hinge separating two distinct sub-bodies that can be folded over and fastened to each other and (2) a second, non-hinged fastening structure that, by design, must be an extension or mechanical offshoot of the first fastener structure and must also have its own dedicated receiving means, thereby allowing the second fastener to form a closed loop between the ski tag/first fastener and the skier's jacket.